Les Barbares was premièred at the Paris Opéra (Palais Garnier) in October 1901, having originally been intended for the Roman theatre of Orange, in Provence. + Rather than concentrating on bloodshed and slaughter, the plot focuses on the evolution of the relationship between Floria, the chief vestal, and Marcomir, the leader of the Barbarians, with the musical interest of the opera culminating furthermore in their splendid duet at the end of Act II. + Saint-Saëns, like Massenet too at that time, shows here his ability to adapt his style to suit his literary inspiration. + Les Barbares is in the same vein as Berlioz’s Les Troyens and contemporary with Fauré’s Pénélope. + The composer does not hesitate to call the work a tragédie lyrique, since it has features of that 18th c. genre. + Also noted is an allusion to the 1870 Franco-Prussian war.

The protagonist of Saint-Saëns' Proserpine, premiered at the Opéra-Comique on March 14, 1887, is no reincarnation of the ancient goddess, but a Renaissance courtesan well versed in culpable amours. According to the composer, she is a "damned soul for whom true love is a forbidden fruit; as soon as she approaches it, she experiences torture". Yet for all the innocence of her rival Angiola, the unexpected happens: "It is the bloodthirsty beast that is admirable; the sweet creature is no more than pretty and likeable." Visibly enraptured by this delight in horror, Saint-Saëns indulges in unprecedented orchestral modernity, piling on the dissonances beneath his characters' cries of rage or despair. He concluded thus: "Proserpine is, of all my stage works, the most advanced in the Wagnerian system." The least-known, too, and one which it was high time to reveal to the public, in its second version, revised in 1899.

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REVIEW:

The cast is led by Véronique Gens in the title-role, her ever-expressive colouring of text superb, from scornful and haughty courtesan to desperate lover. Frédéric Antoun is a stylish Sabatino. Andrew Foster-Williams’s biting baritone makes for a splendid Squarocca. The Munich Radio Orchestra impress, particularly in the pulsating entr'acte depicting Proserpine’s flight back to Florence.

– Gramophone

R. KREUTZER La mort d’Abel • Guy Van Waas, cond; Jennifer Borghi ( Eve ); Sébastien Droy ( Abel ); Jean-Sébastien Bou ( Cain ); Pierre-Yves Pruvot ( Adam ); Alain Buet ( Anamalech ); Namur Chamber Ch; Les Agrémens • PALAZZETTO BRU ZANE 1008 (2 CDs: 91:15 Text and Translation)


Rudolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831) is known today almost exclusively as the musician to whom Beethoven dedicated his Violin Sonata No. 9 (though he only learned of the dedication after the work’s publication, and never played it). He seems to have had a knack for flourishing through all the violent vicissitudes of French politics in his day: a favorite of Marie Antoinette, professor of violin at the Conservatoire of Paris from 1795, a member of Napoleon’s chapel orchestra from 1802, chief conductor of the Paris Opéra starting in 1817, and a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1824. As a composer he wrote many violin concertos, exercises, chamber music, and dozens of stage works.


La mort d’Abel was first seen in 1810. It was a three-act opera set to a text by E. T. A. Hoffman. Following a French tradition, devils in it are seen as external forces who target, torment, and damn good people. In this case, Anamalech seemingly enlists the entire hierarchy of hell to plague Cain with nightmares that feed on his typical sibling envy of Abel, leading to the expected outcome. The work was very well received upon its debut, though not restaged until 1825—at which time the Opéra’s directors chose to completely eliminate the second act, set in hell. Perhaps it was a cost-cutting measure, though even Rossini had many abusive terms for the establishment years later when it chose to chop his revived works to pieces. For reasons not elaborated upon by the producers of this album (who elaborate upon so much more; read below), the 1825 version is given, here.


This work is not dependent upon the contemporary broader trends of the Italian operatic or German Singspiel traditions. The nearest analogies at least some listeners will find—Mozart, Beethoven—are actually due to the omnivorous musical mind of the first, learning from many cultures, and to Beethoven’s interest in his French contemporaries. Cherubini (Italian by birth, but as much a naturalized Frenchman by the mid 1780s as another Italian, Lully, had been earlier) in particular he regarded with great admiration; so it isn’t really Mozart or Beethoven Beethovenian one finds in La mort d’Abel , but some aspects of a French tradition that both these composers came to utilize.


The writing is for the most part very plain. It suited French tastes of the period well enough, given that the les goûts réunis had ended with the triumph of Italian simplicity in melody, and the jettisoning of previously favored contrapuntal and harmonic complexities. (When Kreutzer in later works attempted to move beyond a fairly basic accompaniment, he was accused by his contemporaries of losing his “originality” through “over-complexity.”) The origin of the duet “Unissons-nous pour le render sensible” and the multi-part air “Insensible aux tourments,” to pick just two of many examples, lay in 18th-century opéra-comique , despite the serious tone of the latter piece. Both are primitive, and neither is terribly interesting.


As much can be said for the lengthy passages of accompanied recitative. In Kreutzer’s hands it facilitates the delivery of emotion but doesn’t sustain attention over time, lacking again the more complex elements that made it so interesting under the likes of Lully, Destouches, Campra, Marais, and Rameau. Cherubini among Kreutzer’s contemporaries was able to do this kind of thing much better.


But when Kreutzer is inspired, as in much of the Third Act, he produces something worth hearing. Cain’s “Doux sommeil” is a fine, Janus-faced aria, filled with the seductive warmth of the earlier galant on the one hand, while weaving a memorable, sinuous French melody whose like can be heard in some of the most celebrated arias of Boieldieu, Thomas, Delibes, Massé, Lalo, Gounod, and Massenet. It is the most appealing piece in the score, but there are others: Cain’s raging aria from act I, “Quoi! Toujours ton image,” sustains its energy well, even if successive musical phrases are a patchwork of clichés. The pastoral act I finale for soloists and chorus, “Ô moment plein de charmes,” is a pretty thing with effective vocal exchanges, and some slight but colorful wind writing. And Kreutzer makes simplicity work for him in the act III finale, an angel’s chorus (“Viens dans”). It’s very brief homophonic music that achieves much merely by throwing a single instance of nonfunctional harmony into the mix.


The performers are all above average, though none are without fault. A single one unites most: a widening vibrato that causes loss of focus in some part of the voice, and in Alain Buet’s case, produces a uniform wobble that undercuts his good phrasing and dark bass tone. Jean-Sébastien Bou is the best interpretatively speaking, making an excellent job of it in his extended recitative, “Ou vais-je?” He also sings softly to strong effect. Sébastien Droy can do the latter as well, but has an annoying habit of increasing volume as he rises in range. Pierre-Yves Pruvot is better here than in the title role of Salieri’s Falstaff (Dynamic 405/1-2), more attentive to the meaning of the text, while Jennifer Borghi doesn’t always enunciate as clearly as the others, but sings with an attractive lyric soprano. Guy Van Waas conducts Les Agrémans with spirit and discipline, but I admit the complete lack of vibrato throws me off. This isn’t the Baroque (when vibrato was used, though less regularly), but the early 19th century, and there are plenty of instruction manuals and reviews of the day teaching and citing the regular use of vibrato as a standard tone-coloring device. Its loss makes the instruments sound anemic at times, especially when the violins are exposed.


The jewel box is actually a digest-sized book in French and English. Aside from the original text and transliteration of the opera, you also get a remarkably fine series of essays, including a historical introduction, a piece on the work’s reception by the contemporary press, Fétis’s entry on Kreutzer in his Universal Biography of Musicians , a lengthy examination of oratorio and opéra sacré in 18th- and early 19th-century France, one on the fantastic genre at the Paris Opéra under Napoleon I, and a forward to the 1825 libretto written by E. T. A. Hoffman, in answer to claims that another, far less innovative work years before had been plagiarized for his ideas.


On balance, La mort d’Abel is an uneven work, but at its best, demonstrates why Kreutzer’s operas were so well regarded by his contemporaries. It fails when it tries to be profound, but succeeds whenever it maintains a light, charming tone. And there’s enough of the latter to more than sustain it. Recommended.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Who today has heard of Max d'Ollone? He studied with Massenet, was a contemporary of Richard Strauss, composed operas and cultivated a sensuous and deeply Romantic approach to vocal music. The Prix de Rome competition gave him the opportunity to compose several impressive cantatas and pieces for chorus and orchestra, characterised by a combination of grandeur and refinement.

An admirer of Mozart and a great reformer of music education at the recently opened Paris Conservatoire (1795), Charles-Simon Catel composed in 1810 Les Bayadères, an operatic masterpiece set in India, which competed successfully with Spontini’s La Vestale, which was then at the height of its popularity. Tinged with orientalism, it turns the page on Classicism and uses new musical and dramatic structures to create emotion. In a work full of action and excitement, the heroine of the opera, the bayadère Laméa – a ‘star’ role (then a new concept) – shows remarkable presence. On his arrival in Paris in the 1820s, the young and very discerning Hector Berlioz was filled with enthusiasm by this work. - Ediciones Singulares

The composer Jules Massenet constantly renewed his style. Towards the end of his life he turned to experimental forms of expression that are astonishing even today. Combining a marked taste for the late eighteenth century (already found in Manon and Werther) with a very modern use of naturalism, Thérèse shows both immediacy in its dramatic discourse and lyricism in its emotional expression, thus greatly deepening the strength and poignancy of the subject.

An icon of French Romanticism thanks to the enduring popularity of his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette, Charles Gounod competed three times for the prestigious Prix de Rome between 1837 and 1839. Thus he composed three unpublished cantatas for soloists and orchestra, including Marie Stuart et Rizzio and La Vendetta, which he never had the opportunity to hear in performance. Revealed for the first time, these three cantatas, fine examples of French Romanticism, show a young composer with a remarkable flair for opera. In the end Fernand won him the coveted prize, carrying with it the privilege of a three-year stay (from 1840) at the Villa Medici in Rome. While there he produced several sacred compositions, which have also remained unknown until now. His splendid Messe vocale for unaccompanied choir, written in a neo-Palestrinian style, deserves a place on the programme of every vocal ensemble.

REVIEWS:

Although all the cantatas on Disc One tug with tension, the most poignant display of Gounod’s might falls inside Fernand. Akin to Karine Deshayes, Judith Van Wanroij’s Zelmire reveals remarkable, flexible dramatic delivery, and a buoyantly light timbre. Her lover, Alamir (sung by tenor Yu Shao), shines inside the lyrically French passages with excellent enunciation while Nicolas Courjal sings with such sensitivity to draw out the selfless tendencies of the Spaniard, Fernand. The music’s orchestral interludes anticipate Faust, yet there is a marked feel of Félicien David and his Herculanum. Brilliant from beginning to end.

The four selections on the second CD give variety through mixed voices and soothing organ accompaniment by François Saint-Yves. Hervé Niquet’s direction is pristine and well-reflected through the Flemish Radio Choir with well-balanced and attentive diction upon every turn of the page. Each composition suffuses platonic rapture: undemanding on the ear, lyrically light, sweet in melody.

Anyone who cherishes the magnificence of Charles Gounod would be well to collect this little treasure.

– ConcertoNet.com (Christie Grimstad)

Music-making, at least here, is first-rate with orchestra, choir, and soloists all of the highest quality. Packaging is plush, with bound booklets in French and English containing much biographical and detailed musical information on the artists, their early musical careers, and the music included on the discs. At least with Gounod, one can hear the young composer’s increasing aptitude and increasing confidence as his skills are honed, first in the parochial French competitions and then in the real world of paid artistic commissions. I would guess we are all generally pleased that Gounod eventually abandoned the relatively modestly remunerative life of ecclesiastical music to turn to operatic blockbusters such as Faust and Roméo et Juliet, but these pleasant and melodious apprentice works also deserve to be heard, to be heard in quality productions, and to take their rightful place in the pantheon of recorded music. Highly recommended.

-- Fanfare

Victorin Joncières is the epitome of the Romantic artist who, throughout his life, relentlessly overcame the barriers that were set in his path. He never took the easy way out by composing commercial music; he never held an academic or official position. Dimitri, his masterpiece of 1876, reminds us that he was a contemporary of Gounod and also a champion of Wagner. This opera carries on the tradition (begun by Meyerbeer) of spectacular, monumental works. It takes the listener from a monastery near the River Don to a palace in Krakow, and to the castle of Wyksa, then Red Square in Moscow. At that time, Bayreuth, Orange and Béziers were about to turn opera into a popular art with mass appeal. + complete libretto in French and English

There’s not a single work here that will not captivate you with its breathtaking beauty.

Each volume in the "Portraits" series is devoted to a French composer who has now largely been forgotten; it presents a panorama of his works, performed by many artists from various backgrounds. Torn between France and Germany during his lifetime as a result of the turbulent political situation in his native Lorraine, Theodore Gouvy was recognized by neither nation after his death. The music of this composer, inspired by the passionate style of Mendelssohn, magnified by the nobility of French academicism, is nevertheless of great importance. This CD-book presents a significant selection of his works - for the most part never heard before - along with biographical information, excerpts from letters, and articles discussing the composer's style and personality.

REVIEW:

For most of the works on these three discs these are first recordings. As far as I can tell, only the Piano Trio No. 4 in a performance by Voces Intimae on Challenge Classics, and the Sinfonietta in a performance by Jacques Mercier and the German Radio Philharmonic on CPO, have previously appeared on disc; and that’s my segue into describing this very special and very elaborate collection.

I’m not going to give a detailed description of each of the works on these three CDs, other than to say there’s not a single one of them that will not captivate you with its breathtaking beauty. The Fantaisie Pastorale for violin and orchestra is styled in somewhat similar vein to some of Saint-Saëns’s lesser-known violin pieces. It’s tunefully rural in that easygoing sort of French folksong-y way that characterizes Bizet’s L’Arlésienne music, and it’s sweetly, even chirpily played by soloist Tedi Papavrami.

Gouvy composed La Religieuse, translated in the notes as “The Nun,” in 1875, shortly after completing two of his liturgically-based works, the Requiem and a Stabat Mater. Curiously, though, the text to La Religieuse is rather at odds with its title, for it’s described as a secular cantata after a poem by Charles Hubert Millevoye, and it was written for famed mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot. If the woman portrayed in these verses is indeed a nun, she needs to be doing some serious penance, for she seems to be pining away and longing for death over some lost lover. Listening to this gloriously beautiful extended dramatic setting for mezzo and orchestra, it’s hard to understand why Gouvy wasn’t successful in his two attempts at an opera. Clémentine Margaine is magnificent.

One wonders if Gouvy didn’t have Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words in mind when he composed his Sérénades for solo piano. The keyboard figurations and flourishes are closer to Chopin than they are to Mendelssohn, but the melodies are pure song. I’m probably guilty of overusing the words “beautiful” and “gorgeous” in my reviews, but I don’t know what other adjectives to summon for a description of these brief salon gems, so winsomely and winningly played by pianist Emmanuelle Swiercz.

With his Byron-based Le Giaour, Schiller-based Jeanne d’Arc, and non-literary-based Festival overtures, Gouvy proves himself a master of the concert overture/tone poem/orchestral fantasy genre on a par with Berlioz, Dvořák, Liszt, Saint-Saëns, and Tchaikovsky.

Gouvy’s chamber works—represented here by two string quartets and a piano trio—range in content and style from somewhere between Haydn to Spohr, Onslow, Conradin Kreutzer, and Mendelssohn, with one composer conspicuous by his absence: There’s not a trace of Beethoven.

If you’ve heretofore been hesitant to sample the music of Théodore Gouvy, I’d strongly encourage you to acquire this collection, which allows you to familiarize yourself with his music in a number of distinct genres. The performances are all really good, the recordings excellent, and the lavishly appointed book they come in a conversation piece unto itself

-- Fanfare

After composing Fiesque and Le Roi d'Ys, Edouard Lalo embarked on the composition of what he intended as his masterpiece; a historical and moral opera set against the background of a peasants' revolt. However Lalo died unexpectedly, having completed only the first act. His family entrusted Arthur Coquard with the task of completing the work. The work had a successful premiere in March, 1895 and was revived in Lyon and Paris during the same year.

REVIEW:

The opera was a succès d’estime in its day, with productions in Lyon and Paris following on from its premiere. Thereafter it sank into obscurity until its revival last year in concert by Radio France, under the auspices of Palazetto Bru Zane, in Paris and Montpellier, where this live recording was made. Conducted by Patrick Davin, it has a restless energy that draws you in and keeps you engaged throughout. The playing is richly detailed, the choral singing fiercely committed and there are some fine central performances. Charles Castronovo’s Robert is all persuasive elegance and ringing high notes: you believe in him as a charismatic revolutionary, and he brings real passion to his scenes with Véronique Gens’s smoky toned Blanche, who is equally convincing as a refined aristocrat, questioning her own moral values as her world slowly crumbles around her. Nora Gubisch’s Jeanne makes up in intensity for what she sometimes lacks in steadiness, and the two baritones are nicely contrasted: Boris Pinkhasovich’s Guillaume sounds very baleful and obsessive; Jean-Sébastien Bou’s Comte gradually strips back the layers of hauteur to reveal the man’s essential vulnerability. The recording itself is scrupulously balanced, with only the final applause to remind us it was made live. A fascinating work, superbly done.

-- Gramophone

In the midst of the artistic debate between the German and Italian styles, as the Age of Enlightenment was lighting up its final fires during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, Johann Christian Bach (the youngest of the sons of the great Johann Sebastian) was presenting to Paris his Amadis de Gaule. Reduced and revised from a libretto of Quinault for Lully, this operatic work is shot through from one end to the other with the first frissons of the awakening Romanticism. Under the direction of Didier Talpain, a leading specialist in this repertoire, and played on period instruments, Amadis de Gaule demanded a solo team seasoned in the heroism of the tragédies lyriques in the Gluckian manner. In Pierre-Yves Pruvot, Hjördis Thébault, Philippe Do and Katia Vellétaz one finds on this recording a quartet remarkable for their range of colours and balance, all four equipped with exemplary diction and a shared dramatic sensibility which is both poignant and passionate.

Prompted by the success of Ossian’s poetry during the First Empire, the Opéra-Comique commissioned from Méhul a short and gripping work inspired by James Macpherson’s Celtic reveries. The composer had the brilliant idea of conjuring up the mists of this Scottish fantasy world in his music by using the ‘grisaille’ sonority of an orchestra without violins. The Gothic coloration of wind instruments with divided violas, the melancholy poetry of the harp and solo horn that frequently emerge from the tutti, contrast with the choruses of warriors and the belligerent strains of Larmor and Uthal. The Hymn to Sleep, an eminently Romantic bardic song, came to be seen as one of Méhul’s finest pieces, and was sung over his grave by the Conservatoire students at his funeral in 1817.

With Le Pre aux clercs, premiered at the Opera-Comique in 1832, Louis-Ferdinand Herold wrote at once his biggest success and his last opera (he died three weeks after the first performance). From the Overture to the Act III finale, the simplicity of the vocal lines, the impact of the dramatic effects and the effectiveness of the choral writing testify to the flowering of Romanticism and the compose’s assimilation of Rossini, then the paragon of modernity. Following the July Revolution of 1830, it was time to exorcise unfortunate memories: as was its habit, the Paris operatic world did not treat the topic of politics directly but through the fratricidal conflict that began on St. Bartholomew’s Day. The basis for the libretto was a novel by Prosper Merimee published in 1829, Chronique du regne de Charles IX. The immense success of the opera, virtually contemporary with Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, shows that it was perfectly in tune with the preoccupations of the time- and with the new ambitions of a supposedly ‘light’ genre.

Berlioz wrote of Halévy’s La Reine de Chypre (1841): ‘Its success will at least equal that of La Juive.’ And Wagner added: ‘It is in La Reine de Chypre that Halévy’s new style has appeared with the most brilliance and success.’ So several voices – and those by no means insignificant – have declared this work, written six years after La Juive, to be its composer’s masterpiece. Premiered on 22 December 1841, Halévy’s opera offered the limelight to Rosine Stoltz in the title role: she was the only woman in the cast, for it had been found preferable to isolate her, following her incessant disputes with the other female singers in the company. Alongside her, the tenor Gilbert Duprez shone in the role of Gérard. The story takes the spectator on a voyage from the palaces of Venice to those of Cyprus. But despite an initial success confirmed by several translations and adaptations that appeared shortly after the first run (notably Lachner’s Caterina Cornaro in 1841 and Donizetti’s in 1843), the work gradually vanished from European opera houses. This new recording from the Flemish Radio Choir and the Orchestre de chamber de Paris, alongside a star-studded list of soloists, allows the work to have a new life in a new century.

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REVIEW:

The Palazzetto Bru Zane has done Halévy’s reputation an enormous service by presenting this splendidly cast recording in a new edition painstakingly assembled by Volker Tosta. Gens, in superb voice, is dramatically convincing throughout, as though she were in a staged performance. Cyrille Dubois is equally magnificent as Gérard. Chorus, orchestra and Hervé Niquet’s conducting are exemplary. An absolutely thrilling recording.

– Gramophone